The only thing a board member said about it was Chairman Roy Copeland
reminding me that the board didn’t answer questions in Citizens Wishing
to be Heard.
Col. Ricketts added that in staff’s discussions with CCA,
CCA had indicated they were mulling it over internally, and
VLCIA should “stand by” for CCA’s next move.
That’s right, your local Industrial Authority, whose staff and land purchases
are funded by your tax dollars, should stand by waiting for a private
prison company to tell them what to do.
And the Industrial Authority board’s silence is an answer:
they said nothing different from their previous vote for the contract
to bring in this private prison;
nothing different from their previous acceptance
of the first and second option extensions;
and nothing in objection to what Col. Ricketts said.
So your tax-supported Industrial Authority wants a private prison in
Lowndes County, Georgia.
Do you want that?
Do you want a private prison with fewer guards per prisoner
Continue reading →
Do you know why the county sold this property for less than the assessed
price to the current owner in 2007 minus the wetlands that interject? Did
they know it would be considered for a private prison at that time? Now
the current owner will make the million dollar profit instead of the
county. Since this is considered industrial park acerage owned by the
county why would the county sell it if an industry/business was not
promised at that time? What is the 100 acres the development agreement
says the owner will be given? Is that the 119 acres of wetlands? If
the county decides not to allow the private prison what happens to the
earnest money that has been deposited to date since that would not be
an action by the buyer or the seller?
The seller was not the Lowndes County Commission, which would start with
“LOWNDES COUNTY”, and it’s not the City of Valdosta, which wouldn’t be
hyphenated with the county name like that.
Could it be the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority?
And if GA Power having control over the grid here isn’t bad enough,
now the General Assembly is considering letting DNR ask for donations
from the corporations they issue permits to, and then enforce.
I have a hard time believing that the DNR is going to hold a bake sale
to protect the rivers and streams of our state. Some House leaders,
including Judy Manning (R-Marietta) and Debbie Buckner (D-Junction City)
have said they are uneasy with HB 887. Rightly so.
Continuing my response to
Barbara Stratton’s post:
if public-private partnerships are the aspect of private prisons that you oppose,
by all means oppose them for that.
Did you catch this part in
VLCIA’s recent response?
CCA has absolute discretion in issuing or withholding the NTP.
What kind of local government body gives a private company “absolute discretion”
on whether to proceed with a project?
What happened to those appointed officials’ own discretion as to the
appropriateness of a project for the community?
What if their due diligence turns up something unacceptable?
For example, that CCA told Decatur County that
both Lowndes and Decatur are getting a private prison (one state and one federal),
so the guff CCA told VLCIA about Lowndes being the primary site was disingenuous at best.
How about if
CCA has already breached the contract
by not supplying a required document?
How about if VLCIA receives
convincing arguments from the community
that a private prison is a bad business deal?
Did the Valdosta City and Lowndes County elected governments appoint these people
to abdicate their authority to a private company?
Maybe they did, since
those elected officials are in cahoots on this deal.
CCA lauded them all for their support after VLCIA signed the contract with that
“absolute discretion” language in it.
Does that seem right to you?
As always, LAKE is doing a fantastic job of uncovering the shadows.
However, please note there is a difference in capatalism & crony
capitalism. Liberals have their fair share of the crony variety also
AKA Soros & Monsanto, GM,etc. Free enterprise & capitalism is why
our borders are being crossed legally & illegally, but crony
capitalism will destroy us. If the government chooses to privatize
there should be clear total delineation between them & the private
business, not fascist public/private partnerships like CCA is
courting. We need to resist P3s totally, but they are being welcomed
with multi grant incentives & blessings of the Dept of Community
Development & its Chamber of Commerce conduits. We are on the same
team always for transparency in government & we can be on the same
team against CCA if we focus on fighting the 3P concept.
Just a reminder, I used to work for CCA & I still love to see bad
men in shackles (emphasis on bad). I don’t share most of what I call
simplistic liberal views on prison reform, but I am certainly with
you against crony capitalism especially the public/private
partnership variety. As I’ve said before they are just the good old
boy system, legalized, subsidized, & on steroids.
-Barbara Stratton
Barbara,
Thanks for the compliments, and we’re going to get you carrying a camera yet….
See
next post for the rest of my response.
Last month the Niagara County, NY SPCA
fired its executive director; this month
one of its board members resigned.
He is a veterinarian, and he oversaw the euthanasia that
a report by Erie County, NY SPCA
said was improperly applied.
He claims that wasn’t so, because the animals were anesthetized first,
and now invoices for the anesthetic have turned up.
Michael Wooten wrote for wgrz.com 9 February 2012,
2 On Your Side contacted the SPCA Serving Erie County. Although Ms.
Carr was unavailable, we were told she based her report and
conclusions on the information that was provided to her and the
interviews she conducted.
The Niagara County facility had poor record-keeping, so it’s
possible Ms. Carr did not receive the invoices. Some have expressed
concern about why all documents weren’t turned over during Ms.
Carr’s investigation. Others have also questioned if Rompun, even in
large concentrations and doses, are enough to make an animal
unconscious.
Maybe if there had been more oversight and transparency at the
animal shelter, none of this would have happened.
At least in Erie County, New York, there’s finally some sort
of accountability.
Staff presented the
agenda item
“7.b. Entrance Gate at Davidson and Roberts Roads”:
Lowndes County received
a $2M grant from the Federal Highway Administration
for construction of a new Moody AFB entrance gate,
the gate to be located located at the intersection of
Davidson and Roberts Roads.
$477,991 of this money has already been taken for the
railroad crossing improvements,
leaving a balance of $1.52 million.
The low bid is from Scruggs Company, $1,648,497.05.
Wait, what?
The low bid is for more than the funds available?
Surely somebody will explain that?
Nope, no discussion. Instead, Commissioner Crawford Powell said:
I’ll make a motion we approve the bid as presented by staff.
Commissioner Evans seconded, and they all voted for it.
Hey, what $128,497.05 discrepancy?
Commission voted for $128,497.05 road cost overrun without discussion @ LCC 2012 Jan 10 Part 1 of 2:
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 10 January 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
If we look at the previous morning’s work session (9 January 2012),
we do find a bit more information.
The grant was presented as involving both the Federal Highway Administration
and Homeland Security, and:
CCA inadvertently rehabilitated former prisoner Alex Friedmann
and gave him a new career, lobbying against prison privatization.
He says:
In my view, the worst thing
is that they have normalized the notion of incarcerating people for profit.
Basically commodifying people, seeing them
as nothing more than a revenue stream….
If you incarcerate more people and you put more people in
your private prisons you make more money.
Which provides perverse incentives against reforming our justice system.
And increasing the number of people we’re putting in prison,
whether they need to be there or not, just to generate corporate profit.
I think that’s incredibly immoral and unethical,
I think that’s the worst aspect of our private prison industry.
Some places are looking beyond the details of how to euthanize
animals in shelters or how to control the drugs used to doing
something about the idea of euthanizing animals in the first place.
Nathan Winograd, director of the Oakland-based No Kill Advocacy Center,
believes 95 percent of all animals entering shelters can be adopted or
treated. And even though the other 5 percent might be hopelessly injured,
ill or vicious, he said they should not all be doomed.
Some, if not most of them, can be cared for in hospice centers or
sanctuaries, he said. As for pit bulls and other dogs with aggressive
reputations, he said shelters need to do a better job of trying to find
them homes.
That story has some interesting discussion of difficulties of getting to
such a goal and methods of achieving it.
Maybe we could have such a discussion around here.
Yet the reality is that private prison lobbyists regularly buy influence
with state and federal officials, not only to win lucrative contracts,
but also to change or preserve policies that increase the number of
people behind bars. Private companies have made huge profits off the mass
incarceration of non-violent drug offenders, and are now turning their
attention to increasing the detention of Latino immigrants—the newest
profit center for the prison industrial complex. Ultimately there is no
way to reverse the costly trend toward mass incarceration without reducing
the influence of these companies and their money in our democracy.
Earlier this year in Louisiana, a plan by Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) to
privatize prisons narrowly failed in a legislative committee by a vote
of 13 to 12. The 12 members of the House Appropriations Committee who
voted to approve the prison privatization plan have received more than
three times more money from private prison donors than the 13 members
who voted against the plan, according to an analysis of data from the
Louisiana Ethics Administration and the National Institute on Money in
State Politics. Gov. Jindal himself has taken nearly $30,000 from the
private prison industry.
And of course in Georgia there’s HB 87, which isn’t really about
excluding immigrants;
Continue reading →
I went to Thursday’s Industrial Authority board meeting expecting
to hear something from the board about the private prison.
What I heard:
